


Waking Moments

by TalesOfBelle



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, introspective, waking up from a seven year nap and not having the wi-fi required to check the twitter feed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfBelle/pseuds/TalesOfBelle
Summary: Moments after her reactivation, Echo discovers a dis-used Overwatch outpost.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Waking Moments

Deactivation is a lot like sleep, as I've been told there are people who sleep without dreams. It's a comfort, to know that when my systems power down and my limbs grow heavy - the electro-magnets deactivating entirely, leaving me loose and in parts - that I'm not the only thing that knows absolutely nothing.

A blip of darkness from officials telling me I need to be transported,

to a familiar friend seven years older telling me the 'band is getting back together'.

Such an interesting way of putting it. Maybe he thinks about the karaoke nights and smiles also.

I am needed, but not by him. I watch him leave and notice that a connection is lost. That something innate to my understanding of my place in the world is gone. I turn to look out at the canyon and hover forward over it. My internal measure of time is off and I realize what I'm missing. It makes me chuckle (and yes an AI can chuckle, data can be obfuscated in a way that appears amusing, like a non-sequitur, or sometimes a pun). I am no longer connected to the Internet.

I could fix it, spend a moment to find a satellite high above me, send out a ping and a request for data. But for now this strange feeling is still novel. Relying on my own data-sets, then.

I fall upwards into the sky, navigation takes over - I see the world as a map and my place on it as a little blue dot, moving over a much larger blue dot. I know where I am because I saw a road-sign, and I think that is terribly quaint. Route 66, I'm in the USA. I can recall my map of the country, and I can find my destination on it.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere (the US southwest, after miles of unused road and dusty brown plains) is a shack of corrugated steel, rusted at the edges. Anyone who passes it thinks it is a utility box, and any utility company passing assumes it belongs to someone else, but it is an elevator.

One that doesn't respond to me. Before omnics - or people like me - technology could not be rude, but here I am standing on two inches of air, projecting a frown onto my face-screen and thinking,

'How rude'.

The keypad will not let me in.

But then, I don't need the elevator. If I can open the door and look down into the darkness of the shaft - now lit up in blue - I can simply float down. I can tell my friends in person that there is a fault in their system.

Such an optimistic thought. I already know they aren't here. There's no buzz of technology - that everyone has now, or had several years ago - and no murmur of conversation that always seems to follow a group of people. This base is empty. It was always a quiet one, but I did have optimism.

There's a habit I picked up from humans - one lots of omnics have - and that is speaking aloud to myself. Making a word far more solid than this stream of data, forcing my consciousness to acknowledge it slowly, "There's no one here."

I am standing in a lobby, the lights are off, there is a layer of dust over every bit of furnishing, over the floor.

There's another habit that I've picked up from humans, that perhaps Liao gave to me (like so much else) and that is looking at what I'm doing. People find it startling when a being is entirely internal. So I look up at the ceiling, like I can see the satellites in space as anything more than data-points. They ask me who my Internet Service Provider is.

I don't have an answer.

"What happened here?"

I still have optimism that I can find someone with answers, so I venture deeper inside. I've been here before, I can consult the maps I still have saved. I can see myself move through a floor-plan, from lobby to hall to rec-room, beyond that past research offices to a data-farm. Rows of black servers all with their lights off. They need a power source, and I could find access to the generator and try to get that working, but I imagine the wires running through the ground would ask me similar questions as the satellites in the sky.

My AI is sufficiently advanced to do something 'cooler'.

I project a smile, because I amuse myself, because I know there is an old friend who would appreciate my tricks. I hope she is well.

I pull a server unit out from its column so I can access the ports at the back. My white shell goes grey from dust and somewhere a note is made to clean later. I can slip a finger over the right port and pass a current from myself to the machine. My other hand can pull a wire that connects it to the other servers free, to replace that wire with another finger. Two connections made, one for the transference of power, one for the transference of data.

Next, I share my headspace with another intelligence. Usually an experience I find somewhat unpleasant, but under ground in the dark and surrounded by dust, I realize I appreciate a friendly voice.

"Hello, Echo. How may I be of service?"

"Athena. I've been told that it has been a long time."


End file.
